èßäÉçÇø

What do you want to happen to your remains after you die?

For the past century, most Americans have accepted a limited set of options without question. And discussions of death and funeral plans .

Demand for alternatives such as home funerals and green burials has increased.

That is changing. As a scholar of funeral and cemetery law, I’ve discovered that Americans are becoming more willing to have a conversation about their own mortality and what comes next and embrace new funeral and burial practices.

Baby boomers are insisting upon more control over their funeral and disposition so that their choices after death match their values in life. And businesses are following suit, offering new ways to memorialize and dispose of the dead.

While some options such as —leaving human remains to be picked clean by vultures—and —familiar to Game of Thrones fans—remain off limits in the U.S., laws are changing to allow a growing variety of practices.

The American Way of Death

In 1963, English journalist and activist published , in which she described the leading method of disposing of human remains in the United States, still in use today.

She wrote that human remains are temporarily preserved by replacing blood with a formaldehyde-based embalming fluid shortly after death, placed in a decorative wood or metal casket, displayed to family and friends at the funeral home, and buried within a concrete or steel vault in a grave, perpetually dedicated and marked with a tombstone.

Mitford called this “absolutely weird” and argued that it had been invented by the American funeral industry, which emerged at the turn of the 20th century. As she : “Foreigners are astonished to learn that almost all Americans are embalmed and publicly displayed after death. The practice is unheard of outside the United States and Canada.”

From the 1930s, when embalming became well-established, to the 1990s, nearly all Americans who died were disposed of in this manner.

And it’s neither cheap nor good for the environment. The , including a vault to enclose the casket, was $8,508 in 2014. Including the cost of the burial plot, the fee for opening and closing the grave and the tombstone easily brings the total cost to $11,000 or more.

Cremation was the disposition method of choice for nearly halfof all deaths in the U.S. in 2015.

This method also consumes a great deal of natural resources. Each year, 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid, 115 million tons of steel, 2.3 billion tons of concrete, and enough wood to build 4.6 million single-family homes.

Mitford’s book , beginning with the baby boomers, to question this type of funeral and burial. As a result, demand for alternatives such as home funerals and green burials has increased significantly. The most common reasons cited are a desire to connect with and honor their loved ones in a more meaningful way, and interest in lower-cost, less environmentally damaging choices.

The rise of cremation

The most radical change to how Americans handle their remains has been the rising popularity of cremation by fire. Cremation is less expensive than burial and, although it consumes fossil fuels, is widely perceived to be better for the environment than burial in a casket and vault.

Although cremation became legal in several states in the 1870s and 1880s, its usage in the U.S. remained in single digits for another century. After steadily rising since the 1980s, cremation was the disposition method of choice for of all deaths in the U.S. in 2015. Cremation is most popular in urban areas, where the cost of burial can be quite high, in states with a lot of people born in other ones and among those who do not identify with a particular religious faith.

Residents of western states like Nevada, Washington, and Oregon opt for cremation the most, with rates as high as 76 percent. Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky have the lowest rates, at less than a quarter of all burials. The National Funeral Directors Association that by 2030 the nationwide cremation rate will reach 71 percent.

Cremation’s dramatic rise is part of a huge shift in American funerary practices away from burial.

Cremation’s dramatic rise is part of a huge shift in American funerary practices away from burial and the ritual of embalming the dead, which is not required by law in any state but which most funeral homes require in order to have a visitation. In 2017, a survey of the personal preferences of Americans ages 40 and older that more than half preferred cremation. of those respondents said they would like to have a full funeral service with viewing and visitation prior to cremation, down from 27 percent as recently as 2015.

In 2014, the median cost of a funeral with viewing and cremation was $6,078. Part of the reason for that shift is cost. In 2014, the was $6,078. In contrast, a “direct cremation,” which does not include embalming or a viewing, .

Cremated remains can be buried in a cemetery or stored in an urn on the mantle, but businesses also offer a for incorporating ashes into objects like glass paperweights, jewelry, and even vinyl records.

And while to the 2017 survey associate a cremation with a memorial service, Americans are increasingly holding those services at religious institutions and nontraditional locations like parks, museums, and even at home.

Going green

Another trend is finding greener alternatives to both the traditional burial and cremation.

The 2017 survey found that 54 percent of respondents were interested in green options. Compare this with a  by AARP, which found that only 21 percent were interested in a more environmentally friendly burial.

The alkaline hydrolysis process results in a sterile liquid and bone fragments that are reduced to “ash.”

One example of this is a new method of disposing of human remains called , which involves using water and a salt-based solution to dissolve human remains. Often referred as “water cremation,” it’s to cremation by fire, which consumes fossil fuels. Most funeral homes that offer both methods of cremation charge the same price.

The alkaline hydrolysis process results in a sterile liquid and bone fragments that are reduced to “ash” and returned to the family. Although most Americans are unfamiliar with the process, funeral directors who have adopted it generally report that families prefer it to cremation by fire. to legalize it.

Going home

A rising number of families are also interested in so-called “,” in which the remains are cleaned and prepared for disposition at home by the family, religious community, or friends. Home funerals are followed by cremation or burial in a family cemetery, a traditional cemetery, or a green cemetery.

Proponents say that caring for remains at home is a better way of honoring the relationship between the living and the dead. Home funerals are also seen as more environmentally friendly because remains are temporarily preserved through the use of dry ice rather than formaldehyde-based embalming fluid. Assisted by or educated by , families that choose home funerals are returning to a set of practices that .

The says rejecting embalming is one way to go green. Another is to choose to have remains interred or cremated in a fabric shroud or biodegradable casket rather than a casket made from nonsustainable hardwoods or metal. The council promotes standards for green funeral products and certifies green funeral homes and burial grounds. More than 300 providers are currently certified in 41 states and six Canadian provinces.

For example, , the historic New York cemetery made famous by Washington Irving, is a certified “hybrid” cemetery because it has reserved a portion of its grounds for green burials: no embalming, no vaults, and no caskets unless they are biodegradable—the body often goes straight into the ground with just a simple wrapping.

Clearly Americans are pushing the “traditional” boundaries of how to memorialize their loved ones and dispose of their remains. While I wouldn’t hold out hope that Americans will be able to choose Viking- or Tibetan-style burials anytime soon, you never know.

This article was originally published by . It has been edited for èßäÉçÇø! Magazine.